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UK ISPs Near Agreement On Illegal File Sharing
ISPreview UK writes "UK Music's chief executive, Feargal Sharkey, claims that progress has been made on a deal between the music industry and broadband ISPs to tackle illegal file sharing. The comments came during yesterday's annual Internet Service Providers' Association conference in Eversheds, with an ISPA spokesman confirming that 'some kind of agreement between rightholders and ISPs can be reached,' adding, 'everyone wants to work together to make legal online models work.' The news follows July's crucial Memorandum of Understanding agreement between copyright holders and six of the UK's largest ISPs, which account for roughly 90% of the country's broadband market. The initial agreement approved a principal of sending warning letters to customers who have been accused of downloading illegal music or movies."
I already downloaded the Billboard Hot 100 for every year from the 1930s to 2007. I'm all set.
As for the newer stuff, they won't see a single dime from my pocket. I think I will survive just fine if I never-again hear Britney's or Rihanna's voices.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
In the news today 80s popster Feargal Sharkey was complaining of the dearth of legal pay-for-download music companies:
"A good Mart these days is hard to find" he sang
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Are they going to be spending much of my - as a customer - money on lawyers, differentiating between illegal downloads of current releases, and, say, rips of long out of print vinyl such as the Avant Garde Project (www.avantgardeproject.org) ? I rather imagine they'll just be trying to stop anyone who is bypassing the cosy tv/mp3/movie deals they've done with studios, broadcasters and publishers.
Some sort of blanket encryption on *everything* sent from/received by people's PCs is sorely needed. Perhaps if every PC were running TOR (or something functionally very similar) there would be less of a problem here.
FTA: although some ISPs have tested warning letters with suspected customers.
I would have thought the first steps in correctly policing illegal filesharing was firstly to have a firm grip on who exactly your customers are..
And while I'm being pedantic:
The initial agreement approved a principal of sending warning letters to customers who have been accused of downloading illegal music or movies
And who's doing the accusing? the ISP or the music industry? Cos if I was the music industry I'd just accuse everyone in the UK three times and hey presto the UK is offline.
if half the resources were put into combating online identity theft, pornography or malicious hacking, these problems could be stamped out.
The BPI and the various other rights groups in the UK want to have their cake and eat it. They want ISPs to police their users for illegal downloads, send out warnings & then cut them off completely AND they want them to pay for all the costs of doing so in addition to the potential lost income from cutting off the users.
Understandably the ISPs aren't overly happy about this arrangement, which is why I'd be very surprised if this was anything more than vague agreement of "Yes, we should probably do something about all those people paying us large monthly fees to download your music illegally".
Interesting to view the 6 ISPs involved - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk, AOL) and BSkyB - on this independent UK ISP ratings site
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Shall we state it again for prosperity?
America != World.
No matter how much you want to think so. How this relates to a story about **UK** ISP's, I don't know. However, if you wish to turn Slashdot into Slashdot World Series (i.e. only America actually contributes - my apologies... Wiki says that there is one Canadian team too...), then feel free to keep whinging. Or just read the story at the top of the front page about the election that, with its sister postings over the last few days, has made me remove "News" from my topic lists. Do British people shove comments on random pages when a new Prime Minister is elected? No. Why not? Because it would annoy the Americans and others who have precisely zero interest in such things.
The cake is a lie.
Squirrel!
So how is this actually enforced?
As I currently understand it:
1) "Lawyer" firms trawl P2P traffic and compile list of "illegal" file sharers and thier details (e.g.IP addresses, time/dates, torrent files)
2) Contact ISP, handover "evidence" of illegal activity, ISP monitors user's activity and examines previous usage logs.
3) If activity is "confirmed" then "warning" letter is issued to user.
4) ISP continues to monitor user's activity and "liase" with "lawyer" firm.
5) If user's activity ~= "illegal" then possibly issue further letters and/or throttle user's bandwidth.
I'm tempted to type "6)....Profit!" :)
What if the user contests the evidence?
What if a mistake was made identifying the user?
Will it entail an expensive legal battle to prove innocence (I thought *guilt* had to be proven)?
This raises many questions and I doubt this is a workable solution.
If it is only P2P traffic that is monitored then I will not be to concerned at the moment. There are many other ways illegal content can be obtained and quite frankly let them monitor P2P.
It will make "lawyers" feel they are doing their job, Copyright owners will feel "justice" is served, ISPs keep our Orwellian Govt of their backs and smart users will find alternatives.
Business as usual.
I'm more worried that the Govt want a central database of email and internet usage rather something short-sighted like this.
As usual the Govt and content holders are one step behind the internet generation and will continue to stumble through all this "new-fangled" technology.
If you're sent one of these letters that alleges that you've been 'pirating' film/music/whatever but you haven't been trading/downloading in anything copyrighted - and therefore innocent against these allegations - is there not a case for bringing some kind of libel or defamation action against your ISP, the lawyers and the BPI?
don't do anything really annoying like have a mandatory "music and movie tax" on all broadband connections.
You may be joking, but there are proposals to change the TV licence fee to do exactly that.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The Music Industry is so happy that they could come to an 'agreement' with the ISPs.
But they don't understand that the 20th-century business model of corporations 'owning' music recordings is outdated and irrelevant as we enter the 21st-century (there's always a 10-15 year lag between the calendar year and the consciousness awareness that things are different in the new century). Everyone has the ability to copy everything that the music industry 'owns' quick, discretely, and easily. Everyone has the ability to exchange these copies freely. This isn't going to change regardless of how much what's left of the 20th-century music industry clamps down on the exchange of what they have deluded themselves into believing is their 'property'.
The best, the very best, that they can hope for is to lock up the music recordings of the 20th-century. Which turn a profit for them now, but won't when they are removed from circulation because they don't fit into 21st century business models and are forgotten. The music industry will, in 50 years, still 'own' the rights to control distribution of the Beatles and Brittany Spears. But by then that right will be as profitable and as relevant as the right to distribute 17th-century Bulgarian folk songs is today.
If you don't like the music industry and their RIAA goons, then make your own music recordings (and musical events), and keep them hidden from all the 'cool' people who make their living off the music industry.
The music industry is imprisoned by this idea that music consists of marketable individual disk units of audio recordings. Which they claim is form of property that they own. Music is an arrangement of repetitive audio patterns which are perceived by people as pleasant primarily according to their cultural training. Music is the one thing that can never be property. As the technology of the 21st century reduces the influence of audio disk recordings as the definer of music, the RIAA will become less of a burden as each year passes.
So let them have what they want; let them think that they've won their war, and move on to other forms of cultural enlightenment through music.
But, as you do, for Goodness sakes, don't tell anyone in the music industry about what you are doing.